Lee County hearing examiner hears debate over marina redevelopment, proposed 135-foot boat-storage tower in North Fort Myers

Donna Marie Collins, the hearing examiner presiding over Lee County’s Dec. 10 zoning hearing, heard several hours of testimony on a proposed amendment to a Commercial Plan Development (CPD) on Hancock Bridge Parkway in North Fort Myers that would reconfigure an approved marina and add a dry-stack boat-storage building and related accessory uses.

The applicant and technical witnesses described the request as a reduction in overall land-side intensity compared with prior entitlements and argued the project would reinvigorate boating access in a part of the county they said is underserved. “This is where we live, and a lot of people move here for that reason,” project planner Cindy Lehi Briseuilla said, summarizing the proposed master concept plan. The application seeks to reduce the number of dry storage slips and increase wet slips, allow boat sales and a small open‑air food and beverage area, and raise a maximum building height from 50 feet to 135 feet.

Staff presentation: why the changes passed initial review

Adam Mendez, principal planner in Lee County’s Community Development Zoning section, told the hearing the property lies in the LEAP plan’s intensive development category and in a water‑dependent overlay that anticipates marina uses. Staff highlighted two notable net changes in the filing: a reduction in entitled boat slip capacity (the staff summary showed a net decrease of roughly 166 slips) and an increase in the proposed maximum structure height from 50 to 135 feet. Mendez said staff’s analysis found the revised mix of uses consistent with relevant LEAP policies and county code when conditioned to mitigate…